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Texas may be tempted to swagger a bit over the fact that the number of hourly workers earning minimum wage or less declined by 21,000 last year. This is a welcome sign of a recovering economy.

But there should be decidedly less giddy-up in that stride when a few other facts sink in from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

Texas ranks next to last, behind Idaho, among the states and the District of Columbia in the proportion of hourly-paid workers at or below federal minimum wage.

And while the 7.5 percent of hourly workers in Texas at or below that wage — 425,000 people — is a drop from 8 percent, it still compares unfavorably to the national rate of 4.7 percent, a drop from 5.2 percent.

Both rates dropped by the identical .5 percent in 2012, but if Texas is to give up its status as a national leader in the proportion of its workers just getting by, it has to register far more serious declines.

Correct. A minimum-wage job is better than no job. But a job of $7.25 per hour — the federal minimum wage — amounts to $15,080 for full-time work annually; less, of course, for part-time work. This is slightly below the federal poverty level of $15,130 for a family of two, as in a single mother and a child (9.7 percent of Texas women paid hourly are at or below minimum wage).

President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address in February, proposed that Congress raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour. Last week, U.S. House and Senate Democrats proposed raising it to $10.10 an hour by 2015.

Both the president and the congressional Democrats would link the minimum wage to automatic annual increases tied to cost of living. Texas ties its minimum wage to the federal wage.

Recently, Gov. Rick Perry flew to California to woo businesses. Part of his pitch was that Texas is just far more business friendly. If he's talking taxation, he has a solid point. And if he's talking about the availability of low-wage workers, that might even be a selling point, depending on the business.

But neither in the long run will necessarily make Texas a more livable state if tax revenues and wages lag behind need. Public education, anyone? Keeping water infrastructure and roads in good enough shape to attract businesses in the first place?

California, with a higher minimum wage than the federal standard, shares many of Texas' demographics. Yet, its rate of hourly workers at or below federal minimum wage is 1.4 percent, more than five times less than Texas'.

Arizona, which also has a higher minimum, is also similar demographically. And its rate, at 4.6 percent, more closely mimics the national norm.

Mississippi, which Texas can traditionally thank for elbowing it out of the utmost bottom in other rankings, has 6.4 percent of its hourly workers at or below minimum wage — still less than Texas' 7.5 percent.

And if you're looking for a better indicator — per capita income — Texas hovers only in the middle of the pack among the states. And let's not even go to Texas' ranking nationally in the number of residents without health insurance.

The reality is that business friendly is not always, or necessarily, people friendly. Texas has plenty to brag about but must find a better balance between the two.

In the interim, an increase of the federal minimum wage — and expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — will simply help more Texans get by.